


Too Young to Be Super, Too Smart Not to Be

by susiephalange



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Babysitting, Child Reader, Childhood, Cutesy, Divorce, F/M, Family Feels, Female Reader, Gen, Reader is The Child of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, Studying, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-11-29 15:38:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11443902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiephalange/pseuds/susiephalange
Summary: The child of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts is placed in a broken household following their divorce, and a game of Hot Potato when both the business tycoon and Iron Man of the family are busy everyday. But all you want is someone to play with you.Previous titledWeekend At Happy's.





	1. Weekend At Happy's

**Author's Note:**

> This was a request from my Wattpad. Seeing as I'm almost 20 years old, and it's been a while since I was a child, please forgive me if anything's off as to writing from the perspective of a 7 year old girl. I did my best, and that's what counts.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're the child of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, and everyone is away doing adult things without you. All you want is someone to play dolls with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not one usually to write Reader as a child, but here we are.

When your Mommy and Daddy split up, one took you, the other the company. Every day was like Christmas with Dad; even if his facial hair wasn’t white, or long like Santa Claus, he did his best to make you try to forget that your family was different to before. You were seven years old, and certainly not an idiot; after all, your father was Tony Stark, and your mother was the hard-working Pepper Potts. But everything was changing again, but bigger.

But all you wanted to do was have someone play dolls with, and nobody was able to do that.

Since your Dad was an Avenger, and was always zooming around the world in his shiny red and gold suits, he was never home enough to play with your toys and wind-up cars. You might be of age to go to school, but you were yet to go to school with other kids your age, and instead learned with F.R.I.D.A.Y and your long-distance teacher on the computers.

You’d met Steve Rogers before, but he wasn’t able to play with your toys. Neither could Natasha, or Clint, or even Thor. Uncle Happy said that the Avengers were having some troubles, and that they needed to fix them before they came to play with your new doll house. He didn’t mention where Thor was, but you knew the god was probably in his castle playing dolls with his brother. It was okay. Even though you didn’t have a brother, you knew it was important that Thor played with him a while, even if you couldn’t join in.

Maybe who you missed the most was Fun Wanda. She wasn’t like the other Avengers; she was younger, and her eyes lit up like there was fairy magic in her. She had shown you some of her special things – how colours came from her fingers, and made things she didn’t touch do things. She was just like a princess; her hair was long, and her fingers, too. They were good fingers for braiding hair with the flowers she made from her special gift. She had laughed when you had first called her Fun Wanda; her face lit up like something from a story book.

On the eighth day without seeing anyone but Uncle Happy, you packed a bag. Stuffed into your lamp-shaped backpack were a few of your favourite toys, the book you had been reading with Sam (“‘ _The Story of Doctor Dolittle’ is awesome, you’re going to love it!_ he’d said, and then only had time to read only half to you) and a pair of spare socks. But before you could sneak out to find someone to play with you, you were stopped. By Uncle Happy.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He asks you, raising a brow.

“Out,” you reply. “To someone who will play with my toys with me.”

He extends a hand to your shoulder, and reroutes you to face inward the apartment. “________, it’s not that I don’t _want_ to play toys with you…I’m busy. I need to make sure you’re safe.” Bulging out from the zipper is your novel, complete with the bookmark Sam left in it. Happy notices it, and adds, “How about you sit down, and I’ll read?”

“No thank you,” you shake your head, defiant, but still polite. “I want Fun Wanda, and Steve, and Clint who makes monkey faces with me over the table,” you feel tears welling in your eyes, and you add, “I miss my Dad, and Mommy.”

Uncle Happy doesn’t say anything while you hiccup through your tears, almost like you’re a little baby again, and wailing to get your way. But you’ve tried crying to bring your parents back together. It hadn’t worked the first time.

The phone in his hand vibrates, and once again, he must take the call. “Sir? Sir – okay. Yes. I’ll send a plane at once. Yeah. All right. yes, stay still.” He takes the phone from his ear, and with a flurry, he’s texting, and tapping at the holo-screen of the modified phone with graphs in big words you haven’t get gotten the hang of. “Okay. One has been dispatched. Sit tight.”

You swallow, watching Uncle Happy. “Was that my Dad?”

He nods, slowly.

“Why didn’t you let me talk to him?” you ask him. “You always let me speak to Dad when he’s on the phone.”

The bodyguard and close friend of Tony Stark took a moment to consider his words. Then, “I know, ________. Your dad just needs to focus on coming home first. It wasn’t a good connection, you wouldn’t have been able to talk long.”

You cross your arms. “Why won’t you let me go find anyone to play with?” you ask him, but before he can speak, you add, “I’m seven, not an idiot. I know there’s something going on.” You point to the TV in the corner, virtually untouched since you’d been left in the apartment with Uncle Happy. “I might not have access to the internet here, but the news last night said something about the Avengers.”

Happy nods. “There’s…a problem.” He admits, and adds, “You remember that time I took you to the supermarket, and we only had enough money to buy one tub of ice cream, but you wanted mint choc chip, and I wanted vanilla?” He asks.

“Yeah, but I had Dad’s bank card. We ended up buying both.” You remind him.

Happy agrees with you, but stroking his chin in thought, he adds, “Uh, how about…pretend we didn’t have the card. And that you had no choice but to have vanilla ice cream even if you didn’t want to, because I said so.” He tells you.

You stick your tongue out. “Bah! It’s yucky.”

He nods. “But I like vanilla, and it wouldn’t bother me that much. See, the Avengers sort of have to all agree on a certain ice cream flavour, otherwise they can’t be Avengers anymore without being thought of as bad guys.”

Your eyebrows skyrocket. “But they’re not bad guys! They’re the good guys!” you protest. “How can they be bad guys just for wanting their own ice cream?”

Happy takes a deep breath. “Um, in real life, it’s not ice cream they have to agree on. It’s a set of rules that mean they must work under the order of the government. Sort of like the police, except they’ve got Thor.” He tells you slowly. “Got it?”

You shake your head, but then nod quickly. “N-yeah. But that’s not right. The Avengers are supposed to be heroes for the people, Happy, not the government! What if the government do bad things, like when the snake-people were inside Mr. Coulson’s house?”

Happy frowns. “Do you mean when HYDRA infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.?” He asks.

You nod. “If the bad people are in charge of the Avengers, how can they save the day? How can Daddy save the day?” You swallow, looking down. “I don’t want Dad to be a bad guy.”

Happy puts a hand on your shoulder. “He isn’t a bad guy, ________.” Despite focusing on other things, there is still residue of tears in your eyes, and wiping them away, you take your backpack off, kick your sneakers off, and retreat to your bedroom. “________? Are you okay?”

You shake your head. “I want my Dad.”

* * *

When your Mommy and Daddy split up, Steve had given you a toy rabbit, named Rabbit. At first, it had smelt of Captain America, but after time, it had lost the red, white, and blue scent. Instead, your bunny smelt of bacon (often your rabbit joined you for breakfast and fell into the serving plate. Such a naughty bunny), and was the one thing that helped you to go to sleep.

But tonight, after the day of boredom and a botched-up escape plan, your mind was still buzzing, and the smell of your rabbit wasn’t helping. Instead, in the light of your glow-in-the-dark stars, the buttons on rabbit’s eyes were lit up, full of ideas.

“I wonder when Dad’s going to be home,” you whisper to Rabbit, as quiet as you can be. Uncle Happy is in the next room, reading from his newspaper like a Proper Adult that your Dad really isn’t. “I wish the Avengers weren’t fighting with each other. It makes me think about how Mommy and Dad fight. They’re always loud.”

You lay there, waiting for Rabbit to comfort you. But your stuffed toy doesn’t reply to you. It’s only a toy.

When you wake, there’s a hand on your head, softly parting your hair from your face. You blink slowly, and waking, see whose hand it is who is calmly bringing you to the land of wakefulness. Slowly, a sleepy smile comes over your face, and at once, you sit up, and give him your biggest hug that you can give.

“Dad!” you cry out. “I missed you!” There are cuts and scrapes all over him, like he’s been go-karting without you. But still, he has a big smile, and he’s holding you tight too. “Uncle Happy told me about what happened with the Avengers.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Did he?”

You nod. “Yeah. The whole Avengers had to agree on one ice cream flavour, but not everyone liked what they had to choose,” you tell him, “But it wasn’t about ice cream.”

Your dad hums, looking down at you with his warm brown eyes full of love, “That’s right. But uh, I’m thinking of taking some time off all the superhero stuff, ________. I think I should go into a different business.”

“You won’t be Iron Man anymore?” You frown.

“Yeah, I’ll still be Iron Man,” he tells you. “But I’ll focus on other stuff. How about you, and I have _all_ day to do what you want. Disneyland, or pancakes, or –,”

“Can you play with me?” you ask him.

Your dad, the legendary Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man nods. “Sure, kiddo. Want to play house, or science, or –,”

“Science!” you shout, and wriggling from his grip, go to get your toys to set up the scene for the pretend laboratory. “You can be my assistant, Daddy. We’re going to make stuff to make people fly!”

He grins. “Woah! Sounds cool!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second part should be up soon!


	2. Your Friendly Neighborhood Babysitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When your Mom, usually busy with her business things picks you up from elementary school, you're sure something's up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a request, from an anonymous commented named "Andiiiiiiiiii" which makes me either think it's says 'Andy' but really fancy, or that line from the song Whitney Houston sings which is now, quite frankly, stuck in my head. Anyways. This is for you, dear _Andiiiiiiiiii_!

When Mommy picked you up from school instead of Dad, you wondered if he was too busy with his superhero things for you. But then you realised that if that was true, that Uncle Happy would be standing at the door instead. But still, you were happy to see your Mom, and you have her the biggest hug you could muster, and were about to tell her all about the trigonometry textbook you found in the library. But that was until you realised she had her sad eyes. Your Mommy had a thing with her eyes. Even when her mouth didn’t say it, her eyes told you exactly what she was thinking, even without her wanting to say it. You remember back when you were smaller and the house had two parents, her eyes were always happy, or at least, you thought they were. It was hard to tell, sometimes.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” you ask her, disheartened.

Your Mom sighs, and kneels before you, reaching your height. She brushes back strands of her yellow-red hair, and reveals some of those sad eyes in her smile. “It’s not wrong, ________, Baby…I’ve just so much work I’ve got to do tonight at the office.”

You nod. “I know. You’re always busy.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she kisses your forehead, and taking your hand, walks you to the car that’s waiting outside behind the bus area. “But this time I’m not going to leave you with Ms Hill,” she hints, smiling down to you, “I’ve found a new person.”

Inside, you feel better. Even though Ms Hill is good, she’s very busy too, and you were often left sitting on the carpet knocking down towers of Duplo annoyed, watching again as the adults went around ignoring you.

“Who is it?” You ask, jumping into the car, and buckling up. You wave hello to the driver, and smile when they wave back. “Is it Uncle Rhodey?” You ask.

She shakes her head, and buckles up. “No, honey…Uncle Rhodey isn’t ready for childcare just yet. He’s still working on…other things,” she ruffles your hair, and says an address to the driver you can’t quite understand. “I’ll tell you in a sec, okay? How was school today? Did you learn anything new?”

“Not since yesterday…but I think I know how to use imaginary numbers in trigonometry now. I borrowed a textbook from the library.” You blink, and remember, “Did Dad tell you that I’m on the school science project for the science fair?” You beam, thrilled.

“No, he hasn’t told me anything,” Your Mom shakes her head, and whispers, only for you to hear her words, “You’re so smart, and you’re seven?”

You poke your tongue out. “I turned eight a week ago, Mom.”

Your Mom’s eyes are wide, and she pulls a face. “What? Did I just hear _you’re eight_?” You laugh at her funny voice, and she adds, “I can’t believe it. Nope.” She grins.

“Yeah, I’m eight,” you laugh, and glance out the window, seeing the car take the route over the bridge, and for the first time in a while, don’t recognise the area’s architecture. “Are we going out of the city?”

She chuckles at that. “I hope not,” she glances out her window, and points at a sign that reads _10 Miles, Queens_. “Just the other end of it.”

When you reach Queen’s, you’ve eaten your afternoon tea (what food you hadn’t already eaten from your packed lunch), and are practically bouncing in the seat, wondering who it is who will be with you until they kick you out of their place. You wonder if it will be a super-secret agent like Ms Hill says she was (but you think she still is), or maybe a superhero? It can’t be someone normal. Your family doesn’t know anyone who isn’t special in any way.

When the car pulls up, it stops in a quiet neighbourhood of townhouses, some on top of shops, some underneath them. You haven’t been to this end of the city before, and excited, you thank the driver, and bound out before your mom can stop you.

“________, don’t run off!” Your Mom calls out, and huffing, you turn, and see her climb out of the car, walking slowly to you with her heels on the uneven cement. She walks alongside you in your trainers, toward a door of a house. “I’ll pick you up after, at either eight, or nine depending on a call from Wakanda…be nice, okay?”

You frown. “You haven’t told me who I’m staying with, Mom.”

As she knocks on the door, she looks down to you, almost as if to say _how silly of me to forget, sorry about that!_ but those words don’t come out, and instead, her eyes look sad again. You’re not sure if you’re the reason behind those sad eyes, but you don’t ask that too.

“His name is Peter, he works…with your father.” She tells you. “If you have any trouble, his Aunt will be around –,” The door opens, revealing a lady with brown hair, and happy eyes. “May! I hope I’m not late.”

The lady shakes her head. “No, right on time, Pepper.” She looks to you, and her smile widens from her eyes into her mouth, all teeth, and crinkles around her eyes. “You must be ________! Peter’s just up in his room, wait a second,” she turns around, and yells out his name into the house. You remember when your Mommy and Daddy lived in a house together, back when you’d have your name shouted out from places in the house like a magic spell to make you appear. There was a lot more shouting before they split up. You don’t like thinking about that part. “He won’t be too long.”

True to her word, not half a minute later, a boy a little older than you come into sight, and stands beside his Aunt. He’s got a shirt with checks on it open over a blue t-shirt that reads ‘ _physics might theoretical but the fun isn’t’_ on it, and has a little smile until he sees your Mom. Then he just looks like he saw the sun without sunglasses on.

“Oh, – hi! I’m Peter!” He greets, holding his hand out for her to shake. “I – wow!”

His aunt frowns, “Peter,” she warns. “This is ________.”

You wave hello. He waves back.

“I’ll come back for you later tonight, okay?” Your Mom promises, and turning, blows a kiss to you before going back to the car. It drove away before you could think of an excuse not to be there, and you were left with two strangers with brown hair.

His Aunt May waved you inside, and you followed them in. It looked nice, like an ordinary person’s house. Once when you went over to America’s house to work on a project, it looked something like this. Pictures hung on the walls, some art by famous dead people, too.

“Do you want to drink juice, or water?” His Aunt asked you, once the walk up the stairs was done. You were in a living room, with a kitchen too. It looked nice. When you didn’t answer, she added, opening the fridge, and staring into it, “We have apple, and orange, and I think maybe blackcurrant.”

Peter shook his head. “No, we ran out of blackcurrant.”

May raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so no blackcurrant.” You don’t realise _you’ve_ got sad eyes until she notices something, perhaps the eyes, when she adds, “Are you okay, sweetie?”

You nod. “Yeah. I’ve got some homework I should start on, Mrs –,”

She shakes her head. “Please. Call me Aunt May.” She closes the fridge, and gestures to Peter. “Why don’t you help ________ with her homework? You can set up here in the lounge room.”

When your things are set out on the carpet, you see that Peter’s reading the back of the textbook you brought with you from the library. Well, actually it was America who borrowed it from her library at the high school, and you were going to give it back. You swore you’d give it back. You were halfway through it, anyways, and she’d given it to you two days ago.

“It’s about calculus,” you tell him.

Peter nods. “Yeah, I use this kind of textbook in class,” he tells you. “Wh – do they teach this in third grade now?”

You shake your head, and start on the spelling words you didn’t manage to get done earlier in the week. “No, I’m just reading it.”

“You read it for fun?” Incredulous, Peter raises his eyebrows, and adds, “Wow…that’s pretty impressive.”

You smile, “You’re reading it,” you muse, and go back to your spelling words. You’ve just done the words _zucchini_ and _mountain_ easily, and were tackling your choice word of the week, _antidisestablishmentarianism_ well. On the third go, you didn’t even make any mistakes. “You’re impressive too.” Peter laughs at that, but you don’t look up from your spelling words to see what he’s doing.

When you do look up, he’s glancing around the room as if to make sure that nobody is listening, even though you’re both alone and Aunt May is probably watching _Stranger Things_ on her phone in her bedroom. But having made sure you’re alone, he whispers. “Can you keep a secret?”

Mutely, you nod.

You’ve very good at secrets. Like how you don’t say anything about how Fun Wanda would steal bits of food from Dr Banner’s plate when he wasn’t looking, or what Steve does after training with his buddy Bucky. You liked Bucky. You never told anyone that Bucky would sneak you handfuls of plums, even when they weren’t in season. Yes, you’re very good at secrets.

“I’m not just an ordinary person, ________,” he tells you, those brown eyes staring into your eyes like melted bits of chocolate stuck to fingers in the summertime. “I’m a superhero.”

The pencil in your hand falls to the carpet. “Like Dad?”

Peter nods. “Yeah, kind of.” He scoots over from his perch, and pulls the collar of his shirt down. Underneath the blue shirt, is a red shirt that looks just like the suit you’ve seen on the news when your parents weren’t looking. “I’m Spider –,”

“Boy!” you cry out, and realising your voice was too loud, whisper, “You’re Spider-Boy!”

He grins at that, and lets his t-shirt go to cover up his costume. “Yeah, I’m Spider-Boy.” He points to your homework, “Need a hand? I’m your friendly neighbourhood babysitter tonight, and with great power, comes – hey, have you watched _Steven Universe_? I’ve got it on disc if you want to see it!”

By the time nine o’clock rolls around, you’re fast asleep on the lounge, surrounded by two half-empty bowls of popcorn, snuggled up beside a snoozing Peter. When your Mom arrives, she and May take a moment to see their sleeping kids, and quietly, move you to the car where your Dad waits, ready to take you home with his ex-wife together to patch up what they can for you. Aunt May is left standing over the couch, looking down at her nephew. He’s tired, and has patches of skin healing from bruising, and sometimes, she swears that he takes on too much for a kid his age. But when he sleeps, he looks just like a child, innocent as ever. She takes a deep breath, and places a blanket over him, and goes to clean up the mess and turn off the TV before her returning to her online classes.

All is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD I'M AUSTRALIAN AND HERE WE DON'T SAY ""MOM"" WE SAY "MUM" AND DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO WRITE AMERICANISED THINGS??? THIS WHOLE CHAPTER MADE ME WANT TO SCREAM!!!
> 
> Okay glad that's off my chest sorry about that. Hope you enjoyed the fic!

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any requests, find me on Tumblr at @susiephalange, or [@phalangewrites](https://phalangewrites.tumblr.com/request_conditions) ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ✿


End file.
